Theoretical performance of 10 Gb/s lightwave systems using a III-V semiconductor Mach-Zehnder modulator

Author

Cartledge, J.C. ; Rolland, C. ; Lemerle, S. ; Solheim, A.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Queen´s Univ., Kingston, Ont., Canada

Volume

6

Issue

2

fYear

1994

Firstpage

282

Lastpage

284

Abstract

The system performance is assessed for 10 Gb/s lightwave systems that use a III-V semiconductor Mach-Zehnder intensity modulator and operate at a wavelength of 1.55 μm with standard single-mode optical fiber. The modulator is modeled by an equivalent circuit and an experimentally derived functional dependence of the attenuation and phase constants on applied voltage. The influence of the format of the modulating signal and the splitting ratio of the input Y-branch waveguide on the chirp characteristics of the modulator is examined based upon calculation of the receiver sensitivity. Optimum system performance is obtained for an asymmetric splitting ratio.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; electro-optical devices; optical communication equipment; optical modulation; semiconductor device models; 1.55 micron; 10 Gb/s lightwave systems; 10 Gbit/s; III-V semiconductor Mach-Zehnder modulator; applied voltage; asymmetric splitting ratio; attenuation constants; chirp characteristics; equivalent circuit; functional dependence; input Y-branch waveguide; modulating signal format; phase constants; receiver sensitivity; splitting ratio; standard single-mode optical fiber; Chirp modulation; Equivalent circuits; III-V semiconductor materials; Intensity modulation; Optical attenuators; Optical fibers; Optical waveguides; Phase modulation; System performance; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.275451

Filename

275451